One in four consumers who return an item purchased online to a retail outlet will make another purchase while in the store, reports Shop.org and Forrester Research in “The State of Retailing 7.0.” The annual study also notes that 87 percent of retailers accept in-store returns of online purchases, evidence, says the report’s authors, that channel integration is becoming a growing priority for multichannel marketers.

This data supports the observations made by the etailing group, a Chicago-based e-commerce consultancy, in its Mystery Shopping report on the 2003 holiday sales season. Earlier this year, the etailing group reported that, based on its experiences returning items purchased online to the retail locations for 15 merchants, multichannel marketers overall need to make the process easier for customers: Only 33 percent of stores offered a dedicated returns counter; 20 percent did not use packing slips that worked with the store’s POS systems; and 47 percent of returns transactions required the assistance of a supervisor.

To help multichannel merchants improve their in-store returns process for products purchased online, the etailing group developed the following checklist. If there’s still time, take action to ensure customers spend less time making a return so they can spend more time shopping your sales racks.